But how will an expanded bracket look? Will selection criteria
change, or do costs associated with travel become more of an issue
with a greater number of teams competing? NCAA Division I women's
lacrosse committee chair Candice Lee met with members of the media
Wednesday to discuss those questions and more.

Lee, also an associate athletic director at Vanderbilt, is the
outgoing chair whose one-year term ends at the end of August. She
addressed a variety of topics, including deflecting any credit for
the decision and saying expansion was talked about for at least
four years.

As an aside, the 2013 final four site has not yet been
announced, but an announcement is expected by mid-September.

What considerations are being made for travel to
minimize costs and how will those considerations affect the way the
tournament is seeded?

CL: There is guiding principle that we use
currently and I think it would probably be the same with the new
bracket. We try to build in the least number of [plane] flights
possible. That's really a directive from the NCAA. Although the
field is expanding I would image that we would continue to do that.
We try to stay true to a seed, when we're seeding teams, so I think
it would continue. But geography does come into play when you begin
talking about limiting the number of flights.

There is not a hard and fast number [of flights] but once we
look at the bracket and we seed and we stay as true as possible to
the seeds then we have to look at flight considerations. We're
going to our best to manage it, stay true to the bracket but have
the least number of flights. It's a challenge in building the best
bracket but that's the principle that we're committed to following,
and that we have to follow. There's not that much you can do once
it's established who the 26 teams are. Then you just have to manage
it the best you can with your principles and trying to keep the
number of flights down.

Will at-large selection criteria change at
all?

No. The committee reserves the right to adjust selection
criteria as they see fit for the following year, but we haven't
made any dramatic changes to selection criteria so that process
would be the same. We'll be looking at everyone's performance
throughout the year and use the same criteria that we did
before.

Was there any consideration for regionalizing the
tournament with regional pods?

Yes. We looked at various different ways on how to structure the
bracket. The one that we confirmed was the one that caused us the
least amount of problems, and did not disrupt the student-athlete
experience. That's the primary thing, creating a nice championship
experience for these kids, basically trying to keep the same format
we had now if at all possible with limiting impact on travel and
final exams and that kind of thing. We did talk about regionalizing
it, but thought that the bracket we came up with was best.

The top eight teams will still be seeded,
correct?

Yes, we will seed the top eight teams, but only the top six will
get a bye and seeds seven and eight will play in the first round,
but they will be hosting. All of the top eight seeds will host.

Will this expansion have any effect on television
exposure?

I don't know I can answer that with certainty. I would hope it
continues to show how really exciting the sport is. The fact that
the bracket has expanded and that more schools are choosing to
sponsor women's lacrosse, that shows there is great support for the
sport. Like anything else, TV will pick up what's popular and what
people want to see. We hope that people will want to continue to
see women's lacrosse.

Why 26 teams and not 24 or 32?

Twenty four was really the number that the committee started
with. That was the magic number initially, but then when we did a
review of all the conferences that would be eligible to be
automatic qualifiers, that was 13. Because we have to hold to the
principle where we have to reserve 50 percent of the bracket for
at-large, 26 is the magic number because you have 13 conferences
that will be automatic qualifiers. Going into this year, we still
had play-in games. Twenty-six is great because it eliminates the
play-in games. You just have outright conference champions that
will have access to post-season. For the committee, that was a
priority and 26 makes sense when you look at the principles.

If there is another conference added in the future,
would you go back to a play-in format if needed?

Play-in games are used to meet the NCAA criteria, the AQ
guidelines. Ideally you want to not have play-in games, but I hope
that this is a problem committee's in the future will have to
content with regularly because it means that the game is
growing.

With eight days left as chair of the committee, how does
this fit in to what you've done as committee chair?

I appreciate the question, but the changes you see is the work
of an entire committee, but the work of several committees. These
things don't get changed in a year. This is my fourth year on the
committee and first as chair and I can tell you that coming on the
committee in my first year this was part of the conversation. I
would be remiss if I took credit. My time came up to be the chair.
But if you're going to put the responsibility on the chair then you
have to recognize last year's chair, Teddy Burns, and Ryan Bamford,
who was the chair before that, as well as all the men and women who
participated. This is truly a group effort. I would certainly give
recognition to [NCAA associate director of championships] D'Ann
Keller because she really took it upon herself to understand the
sport. It was new to her just like it was new to me. We started at
the same time. This is her doing. This is all the conference
commissioners who were interested in growing the sport. This is
administrators and coaches who had voices and made themselves
heard. This is student-athletes who play women's lacrosse who are
showing that it's exciting and we need to continue expanding.